Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Can C. Elegans be used in a science fair project to mimc the behavior of humans affected with Schizophrenia?

Interesting idea, but I cannot think of any way you could mimic a mental state in an organism that does not have awareness--at least as far as we can tell. Maybe one of the other experts can think outside the box here and come up with a way to model schizophrenia in a roundworm. C elegans does show sensory responses and learned behavior in response to stimuli and it can be used for testing a variety of drugs.

I searched for 'c elegans schizophrenia' and found a 2012 story about a discovery by some Harvard researchers that the worm's neurons are capable of comparmentalized activity, something that was formerly assumed impossible. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... -the-worm/
The article goes on the say that this phenomenon may be used to study such complex human disorders as schizophrenia. I don't know how they planned to use C elegans do that but a search on PubMed may reveal some more recent studies.

I have never experimented with C elegans, but maybe some of the other experts have. Have you worked with them before? Let us know what you are thinking of in terms of hypotheses and experiments and we'll try to guide your project.

Sybee

I have yet to work with the C. Elegans this would be first time. I got the idea to work with these C. Elegans from an article written on PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25194163. The article had said that these C. Elegans share a common human gene that has been shown to be linked with Schizophrenia in humans. The article also mentioned that they had observed the C. Elegans for behavioral changes.

Hi there,

That's a pretty intriguing topic and idea you have there--I had no idea that C. elegans share a common human gene that is supposedly linked to schizophrenia in humans! I personally haven't worked with C. elegans before either, but it sounds like your project may end up requiring some very sophisticated molecular biology techniques. What is the main question you are trying to address here and what is your hypothesis? It is important to develop those first to see if C. elegans would be an appropriate model to address your question experimentally. One thing I would suggest doing is to search for local university labs that work on C. elegans (would be even better if they use the worm to study neurons, but if not, that's also okay) and ask them for their advice on your idea. Depending on where you want to conduct your experiments (home, high school lab, university lab), you have to be mindful of the resources you have and what you would be able to do with them. If you are really interested in using C. elegans to model schizophrenia and studying the effects of this gene that you mentioned on the worm, that would very likely require you to work in a university lab under the guidance of a mentor in the lab.

Feel free to post back with more questions and we'd be glad to help you brainstorm!

Best,
Connie